Verhütung und Abtreibung im Spannungsfeld von Biopolitik, weiblicher Selbstbestimmung und Eugenik

In the organizer's words:

Event with Pro Choice LE

The contraceptive pill is generally regarded as a symbol of women's sexual liberation since the 1960s. Terms such as 'birth rate decline', 'birth strike' or sexual revolution are associated with the idea that, for the first time since the second third of the 20th century, it has become possible for women to have children only under the premise of self-determination. However, knowledge about methods of contraception and abortion has existed for thousands of years. However, contraceptive knowledge and its application was in the hands of women. In Central and Western Europe, a policy of regulating midwives and wise women only began in the early modern period as part of the hunt for alleged witches and a general patriarchalization of society.

The lecture will critically question the common idea of the birth control pill as an instrument of emancipation and place it in its historical context: Beginning in the 16th century, in which the systematic destruction of traditional women's culture by the authorities began on the basis of Christian sexual morality, to the establishment of male gynecology in the 18th century, which in turn was to play a central role in the establishment of racial hygiene and eugenics at universities in the 19th century: The concept of compulsory childbearing for some women and the prohibition of childbearing for others was at the heart of this biopolitical movement, which ultimately also became a leader in the National Socialist racial and extermination policies. It is therefore no coincidence that Germany, of all countries, went down in scientific history as the birthplace of the birth control pill. In the Auschwitz concentration camp, the SS doctor and professor of gynaecology Carl Clauberg, in cooperation with the pharmaceutical company Schering AG, tested hormonal sterilization on female prisoners in order to generatively exterminate the Jewish population. In the 1950s, US researchers continued the experiments on hormonal infertility on Puerto Rican women from the poor population until this sterilization method came onto the market in the 1960s as a bestseller for the pharmaceutical industry and could now also be swallowed by Western women, initially only married women with the permission of their spouse, under the euphemistic title "birth control pill". Since then, the contraceptive pill has been repeatedly criticized for its many, sometimes life-threatening 'side effects' - but its political history has been suppressed.